JOHNNY: Yeah, I start . . . For me, Nick Tosches—I
mean, aside
from the fact that he is a kindred spirit, somebody that I understand,
and I think we have a mutual something that just works, you know?—For
me, Nick Tosches—that guy—is one of a handful of writers from
the
States who has the ability to keep literature alive; to save
literature. In this digital age, he really can save writing.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: [to Nick
Tosches] Nick,
why Johnny? Who’s he?

NICK: He’s a guy whose name is Johnny Depp who is, to me, a
rare kindred spirit with like sensibilities, who has escaped the beast.
He’s probably one of the few people that have survived Los Angeles as a
human being.

Origines

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: [reading the opening passage of The
Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger] “If you really
want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is
where I was born, what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents
were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David
Copperfield kind of crap. But I don’t feel like going into
it, if you want to know the truth.” All right. We’re not going to dwell
at length on that, but just give us a few landmarks about your family
background and childhood years. Early years, say. Johnny.

JOHNNY: Oh boy! Err . . .

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Briefly, just a few lines. And then we’ll
speak about what’s really the link.

JOHNNY: I’m from the bellybutton of nowhere, y’know? Which is
a beautiful place to be from, in fact. Kentucky. My earliest memories
are of my brother, in fact, who—We were very close when I was growing
up, and he’s a writer and has always been a writer. And from a very
young age, even when I was doing horribly in school, my brother turned
me on to great books and great writers and things like that, so . . .
Yeah, well, I’m a gas station attendant who got lucky. That’s what I am.

NICK: My first legitimate employment was being a porter in a
bar, which I always refer to the most salient aspect of this job was
picking the cigarette butts up out of the urinal by hand in the
morning. And I’ve never tossed one in since. I’ve committed every other
sin against mankind, but I’ve never done that. And—this is more than a
few landmarks . . . As a matter of fact, Johnny and I were talking the
other day and it was like: he said “Well I can always go back to
pumping gas” and I said “I can always go back to being a porter. I was
just as happy; at the end of the year I had just as much money left.”
And we sort of looked at each other and said “No, we can’t.”

JOHNNY: [laughing] “Nah!” or
“Better not!”

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Is this something that you have in common?
You [indicating JD] used to be a gas station
attendant in South Florida; a mechanic—

JOHNNY: [turning to NT] We also share the
fact that we’re both drop-outs, you know?

NICK: Yeah, we don’t have—

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Drop-outs to what degree? What do you mean?

NICK: Well, we’re not . . .

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: You agree with that, Nick?

JOHNNY: We’re not college-educated.

NICK: We don’t have a degree. And in this almost post-literate
cultural milieu, it’s the people with the degrees that are making it
hard for—I’ll speak for myself—for me sometimes, and I think for
Johnny, in terms of just ‘the industry,’ in terms of business.

JOHNNY: Business, yeah.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Coming back to you two, isn’t there anything
like a generation gap between you two? Johnny, you were 20 in 1984 if
I’m not mistaken.

NICK: I do resent the fact that I’m going to die before him,
if that’s what you’re getting at.

JOHNNY: [laughing] That’s not necessarily
so!

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: You were 20 in 1969. You were
in the Vietnam
War. Isn’t there a generation gap? You
don’t . . .

NICK: Most of our reference points have to do with either
human beings, which don’t seem to change, or with things that existed
500 years ago, or were eternal. To me, the politics of the so-called
Vietnam War is about as boring as the politics of this Afghanistan
made-for-TV war. So, I don’t know. We have looked at newspapers and
shared a laugh, but other than that . . .

JOHNNY: No, there is no—

NICK: There is a generation gap but it’s like it’s not there.

JOHNNY: Just in numbers. Just in terms of numbers, when we
were sort of spat out, y’know, but I’ve never ever thought of it or
noticed it, anything like that, no.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: The ‘60s, the early ‘70s were really
exciting: wild and creative; inventive. Don’t you ever feel sorry,
Johnny, that you were born too late? The reason why I ask is it seems
to me you choose your parts carefully, very discriminatingly, as if you
wished to embody certain characters and taste what they went through,
by proxy. Do you see what I mean?

JOHNNY: Yes.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: For example, a stoned rocker in Cry-Baby:
the journalist who’s on acid in Fear & Loathing in
Las Vegas; or even Dead Man, Jarmusch’s
film with a more mystical streak.

JOHNNY: Well, you know . . . I mean, me—

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Again, there’s nostalgia for the ‘60s and
‘70s—crazy!

JOHNNY: I have great nostalgia for other times—

NICK: What was the period of Dead Man? Was
that, like, 1890?

JOHNNY: 1880 . . . yeah, 1880, 1890. Me, I have great
nostalgia for many other periods, yeah. The Twenties. To have been able
to have lived in the ‘20s in Paris would have been something very
special. I have great nostalgia for other times and I pine for other
times, sometimes.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: You do?

JOHNNY: Yeah, because other times—times when innocence was in
fact a possibility. When there really was—

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: And culture is a link into the past, also. If
you have a little memory—

JOHNNY: Yeah, but the States doesn’t have much culture now
though.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Both of you stand aloof from the mainstream.
I mean you try to be apart; a little apart. How apart? How do you get
along with Hollywood, the show business, and all that? Johnny?

JOHNNY: Me? Shhheesshh . . .

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: How do you deal with it?

JOHNNY: Well, you just deal when you have to, really. I mean,
if the beast is on your back you just take a couple of pot-shots here
and there.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: That’s not pleasant, having a beast on one’s
back!

JOHNNY: It’s not particularly pleasant, but it is what it is,
you know?

America, America

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Nick, in one of your novels, the
character
Louie in Cut Numbers—[to JD] You
read that book, didn’t you?

NICK: Well, if you look at it like this . . . I’ve tried to
just periscope into a broad view of history. One point is: you look at
empires. The Roman Empire: a couple of thousand years; this, that and
the other . . . America: it’s 200 years old, and it’s already shot! It
didn’t even get to fit that many candles on a cake!

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: That’s something you share. Shaking ‘the
American Dream,’ both of you.

JOHNNY: It doesn’t exist.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: It doesn’t exist. It’s a dream. A dream never
exists.

NICK: America’s the only country that ever envisioned itself
as a dream. The American Dream.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: [to JD] Tell us more about
people you like. For instance . . . [reaching
for a book]

Sur La Route

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: [reading the opening of On
the Road by Jack Kerouac]: “I first met Dean not
long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious
illness that I won’t bother to talk about except that it had something
to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything
was dead. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life
you could call my life on the road.”

JOHNNY: Beautiful! Beautiful. That’ll be old
Mr. Kerouac, yeah.

NICK: It’s a beautiful first sentence.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: That’s the first sentence of—

JOHNNY: On the Road, yeah.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: You played the part of Kerouac in The
Source, a film which is not released in France; which nobody
has seen in France, The Source.

JOHNNY: Well, not really. I didn’t play the part, in fact.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: It was not Kerouac?

JOHNNY: I didn’t play the part. I was asked by the filmmaker
to read some of Kerouac’s works, which I did. But not as Jack, which I
would really, really not attempt.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: You wouldn’t dare?

JOHNNY: Nah.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Really?

JOHNNY: Nah. Some things you don’t touch.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: He’s so sacred?

JOHNNY: Yeah. For me, yeah.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: More about people you admire. And even more
than that: people who did things which are very, very meaningful for
you.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: [reads, in French, the Prologue to In
the Time of Your Life by William Saroyan] “In the
time of your life, live—”

[At this point, JD mimes ‘Cut.’]

JOHNNY: He could have stopped there, you know? He could have
stopped there. “In the time of your life, live.” It would have been
fine. But he continued. [Shrugs] Hey.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: [continuing with the
quote]
“—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for
yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere,
and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be
free and unashamed.
Place in matter and in flesh the least of the
values, for these are the things that hold death and must pass away.
Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption.
Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have
been driven into secrecy
and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious,
for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart. Be the
inferior of no man, nor of any man be the superior. Remember that every
man is a variation of yourself.” [breaking
off] You can comment on it, whenever you wish.

JOHNNY: No, it’s nice to hear it. No, keep going.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: [finishing the quote] “No
man’s guilt is not yours, nor is any man’s innocence a thing apart.
Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil.
These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle, but if the
time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret.
In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall
not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the
infinite delight and mystery of it.” William Saroyan.

JOHNNY: Fantastic! Unbelievable! Just . . . crazy. Beautiful.
And perfect. And a kind of—for me, like a bible. A bible because, yeah:
‘The time of your life’—which is tiny—live! And don’t hold anything
against others. But if someone comes in and you have to take care of
it, you have to take care of it. Take ‘em out.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: You said you adhered 100% to that text, and
that all the parts you played in the cinema conformed to what Saroyan
says.

JOHNNY: They’re somehow related, I think, yeah. I think
they’re related because that, for me, is as much of a bible as what
Kerouac wrote in On the Road. Maybe more, in fact.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: You said, “If I were gifted enough to write
something like that, I would have stopped. I would have stopped there.”

JOHNNY: Yeah!

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: “No more cinema, no more
music, no more
painting—” You paint. You like to paint too.

JOHNNY: Yes. Yeah.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: “—no more nothing, nothing, nothing.” You
would have stopped there. You admire that that much; it corresponds to
you that much—

JOHNNY: Well, what else can you say? I mean—really, for me,
what else can you say? That’s it. That, right there, is the great gift
that Saroyan left to everyone. But to me; to give to my kids—to give to
my daughter and to my expected child—to be able to say: “Here. Read
that. Understand that. And, most important, live that.”
Fine!

Artaud, Basquiat

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: There’s another one who’s very
meaningful for
you. Antonin Artaud.

JOHNNY: Well, yeah.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: That’s a very meaningful one.

JOHNNY: Artaud. Yeah, Artaud was—

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Why Artaud? For many people, he was
just a
crazy poor bastard, who went crazy.

JOHNNY: Well, I think that’s easy, y’know? I think
that’s easy
for people to say—certainly now, but probably as easy in fact at that
time to say—’Bah, he’s just crazy, you know? Fucking leave him alone,’
y’know? Artaud was, I think, a guy who cared probably too much for his
own good and it landed him in the—as NICK eloquently puts—the bug
house. The crazy house. But he wouldn’t conform.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: The loony bin.

JOHNNY: The loony bin.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Kerouac calls it ‘the loony bin.’

JOHNNY: He wouldn’t conform, you know? He wouldn’t
conform to
what was expected of him. And he spilled everything out of
his—like Nick says, to just open your rib cage and let it out.
And that is
freedom. He did it. And was called crazy and sick and whatever.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: JOHNNY, what do you like in Antonin
Artaud?
Is it not the disgraced bastard; the loser?

JOHNNY: No!

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: No?

JOHNNY: Not at all! That’s the definition that he’s
been
given; that he’s been disgraced and everything. I never
see Artaud as disgraced. Ever. Any more than I see
Ed Wood—you know, the filmmaker that I played in the film Ed
Wood—as disgraced. I don’t see these people—certainly not
Artaud—as disgraced. I see him as a winner.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Doomed. Doomed?

JOHNNY: Not even. I mean, no—his destiny, whatever .
. . I
don’t see him as ‘doomed,’ even. I see him as a winner. I see him as
someone who came before us, who knew; and who arrived at a point that
some of us—most of us—won’t arrive at. And was blessed to have arrived
there. And he’s so—

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: You talk of him as a prophet.

JOHNNY: He was a prophet, in a way.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: For you, as a prophet?

JOHNNY: In a way, yeah. As Kerouac was; as Rimbaud
was. As
Saroyan—for that paragraph alone—was, for me. Yeah.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Another important figure. A
painter.
Jean-Michel Basquiat.

JOHNNY: Great, yeah.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: You love him. Why? What is it about
Basquiat?
[laughing; goading him] What’s
eating you about Basquiat?

JOHNNY: Nothing! Nothing’s eating me about anything.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Tell me about Basquiat.

JOHNNY: What I like about Basquiat was his sense of
immediacy.
He had a great respect for art, but in fact went so below that level.
He just went for the immediate. His sense of immediacy. He just spewed
onto the canvas what was in his brain at that moment. Whether it was a
childish design, or a few words that he might have been obsessed with
that day . . . And that—which in a way was a great ‘Fuck you’ to art at
that point in the late ‘70s-early ‘80s—that I appreciate.

JOHNNY: Very much so. As much or more than Warhol.
Warhol’s
statement in the early ‘60s. Yeah. Definitely. Basquiat in a way was
the Warhol of the ‘80s.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Other people. I give you the list
and you
pick up the one who you want to talk about, OK? At least, the ones I
know about! We’ve talked about Kerouac. Serge Gainsbourg.

JOHNNY: [immediate fond smile]
Gainsbourg
is . . . Ahhh, there’s nothing anyone can really say about Gainsbourg
other than one of the greatest minds
of . . . any century. Really, I
mean—

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: He wanted to be a painter, and he
never
accepted the fact that he was not a painter and he always considered—

JOHNNY: He was a painter—

NICK: [interrupting] But in a way
he was a
painter, in a different medium.

JOHNNY: [turning to NT] But in
fact he made
great paintings and great drawings, and he destroyed them because he
wasn’t satisfied with them.

NICK: That was part of his process, his painting.

JOHNNY: Yeah. A great, great artist.

NICK: I discovered him and I discovered a beautiful
artist.

Gainsbourg and Cocteau

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: What a surprise, what a surprise!
Jean
Cocteau. That’s a surprise.

JOHNNY: Cocteau? Why?

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: I don’t know. It doesn’t conform to
the—I
didn’t imagine that you were crazy about Jean Cocteau.

NICK: [to JD] You liked his art
work?

JOHNNY: [to NT] Very much, yeah.
You don’t
like him?

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: What did you like? The drawings? The
poems?
What did you like about Jean Cocteau?

JOHNNY: First of all, the drawings he made for
the
book Opium
were . . . staggering, for me. Staggering. Because here was a guy who
was writing about his cure, or coming off the drug, you know? Getting
the bug off his back. He also had one of the greatest quotes that I
think defined opium or opiates. He talks about a guy who says ‘You
really have to quit doing opium, you know,’ and the guy says: ‘Yeah, I
know, I know.’ Says: ‘If you don’t, you may as well jump off of a
building.’ He says: ‘Yeah, I’ll jump off a building and my body will
arrive slowly, after I do.’ [smiling] Really
amazing. Perfect sense, y’know?

NICK: To me, an even more beautiful line he had was
when he
was kicking opium. Because he was a hard-core addict, as opposed to an
opium smoker. And after he’d kicked he said: ‘I will tell you, it was
the plague of my life for 10 years, but I will never betray my goddess
opium. And I will still say it is the most beautiful thing I have ever
known on earth.’ [JD and NT laugh together]

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Tell me about those three: Brando,
Keaton,
Cheney. Three various types. They have nothing to do with one another.

JOHNNY: Well, no, they do, in fact—

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Tell me what you like. Brando.
Cheney. Keaton.

JOHNNY: All beating hearts, you know? All great,
amazing
beating hearts. Cheney, in my opinion—Go in order, I guess: Lon Cheney
was the first character actor. The first actor who said, balls out: ‘I
want to do what I want to do.’

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: The first one accepted to transform
himself
physically; to become a monster—

JOHNNY: Absolutely.

NICK: He did it by himself. Just like Brando did a
lot of
times.

JOHNNY: Yes, he did it by himself!

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: Exactly. By himself.

JOHNNY: Yeah, like Cheney took his leg and tied it
behind his
back, and stayed that way for hours on end. Great! Now, Keaton . . . I
mean . . . One of the great expressionists. Just everything with his
eyes.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: What do you think of France and the
French?
Anything to say about that? Do you like France?

JOHNNY: [tongue in cheek] They
talk funny.

FRÉDÉRIC FERNEY: [laughing] They
talk funny?

JOHNNY: No . . . France for me, France has been the
greatest
gift for me, y’know? France has been very kind to me; it’s been a very
welcoming place for me. For me it’s the first time in my life I’ve been
able to in fact call a place ‘home.’ So, France gave me that.